Netrix Expands Managed Services With Second Acquisition In 7 Months

‘Our acquisitions are meant to turbocharge our organic growth. We’re continuing to grow and add people organically. And we’re making acquisitions to add to that organic growth. We do acquisitions to add scale, strategic technologies, or geographical presence,’ says Don Penland, vice president of corporate development at Netrix.

Netrix, a provider of managed and professional IT services, Tuesday unveiled its second acquisition this year of the managed IT services units of other solution providers.

Netrix just closed the acquisition of the managed IT services business division of Contegix, which not only expands its services scale but also gives it a presence in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S., said Don Penland, vice president of corporate development at the Chicago-based company.

This follows the acquisition in late December of the IT services business unit of Los Angeles-based Prosum, which gave Netrix its West Coast presence, Penland told CRN.

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For Netrix, ranked No. 188 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 list, the chance to expand with the two carve-outs meshed well with the desire by Prosum and Contegix to focus on their core offerings, Penland said.

Prosum has a well-established staffing business, while Contegix continues to focus on its application platform services, content management systems, and DevSecOps business, he said.

“We see this as a doubling down on our managed services and services desk, as well as the ability to work with larger clients,” he said.

Netrix is currently in discussions with a couple of other acquisition possibilities, all of which are aimed at helping the company continue to organically grow its business, Penland said.

“Our acquisitions are meant to turbo-charge our organic growth,” he said. “We’re continuing to grow and add people organically. And we’re making acquisitions to add to that organic growth. We do acquisitions to add scale, strategic technologies, or geographical presence.”

For example, the acquisition of Contegix’s IT services business did not bring net-new skills to Netrix, Penland said.

“It brought us scale,” he said. “We had a service desk business that came from Prosum focused mainly on smaller clients. Contegix brought us scale, including the ability to scale up our services desk to better support mid-market and enterprise customers.”

Penland declined to discuss the value of the latest acquisition. However, he said that the acquisition was funded with a combination of external and internal resources.

Netrix in August said the company was recapitalized by OceanSound Partners, a New York-based private equity firm. OceanSound Partners also has investments in Trident Technologies, a Huntsville, Ala.-based provider of services to the federal government, and Smartronix, a Herndon, Va.-based provider of services to government agencies and enterprises.

Penland said he is seeing the MSP consolidation trend continuing into the foreseeable future.

“I don’t see mergers and acquisitions winding down any time soon,” he said. “If you are an MSP, you’re getting calls. This will continue for the next two years. And I’m sure we’re getting calls as well, but we just did a recapitalization last year with OceanSound.”